Militants tap popular outrage about video

Heavily armed militants used a protest against an anti-Islam film as a cover and may have had inside help in their deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, a senior Libyan official has said.

As Libya announced four arrests in the case, the clearest picture yet emerged of a two-pronged assault with militants screaming “God is great!" as they scaled the consulate’s outer walls and descended on the compound’s main building.

Killed in the attack were US ambassador Chris Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, private security guard Glen Doherty, another American who has yet to be identified and a number of Libyans.

Eastern Libya’s deputy interior minister, Wanis el-Sharef, said a mob first stormed the consulate on Tuesday night and then, hours later, raided a safe house in the compound just as US and Libyan security arrived to evacuate staff.

That suggested, Mr el-Sharef said, that infiltrators within the security forces may have tipped off the militants about the safe house’s location.

Mr El-Sharef said four people were arrested at their homes, but refused to give further details.

The arrests came as Egyptian leaders, following a blunt phone call from President
Barack Obama
, scrambled to try to repair the country’s alliance with Washington, tacitly acknowledging that they erred in their response to Tuesday’s attack on the US Embassy in Cairo by seeking to first appease anti-American domestic opinion without offering a robust condemnation of the violence.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton
intensified her criticism of an anti-Islam video that continue to provoke protests around the Arab world.